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Saturday, August 16, 2008

My sweet husband made these bed rails for the Little Miss awhile back, but they are unfinished pieces of wood and none too lovely on their own. I had material leftover from the headboard project and my fabric shopping spree awhile back and decided to make some padded "bumper"-esque covers for the bed rails. Now I feel like I can put her in her bed for naps and start getting her used to the idea that maybe she will NOT sleep with Mom and Dad forever. And by maybe, I mean definitely.This project was way more labor intensive than I anticipated, but the end result was worth it. It was my first real experience with piecing multiple fabrics together to make a kind of quilt-top before completing it with the batting and velcro closures. It was fun though. I debated about whether I should put all the food pictures on the outside, but in the end I decided I would let Little Miss "enjoy them" from her viewpoint in bed. Plus, the purple strip on the outside helps to pull the headboard and rails into a more uniform look. Or something.

Connie arrived to me with naught but a vinyl cover to keep her dust free. Functional, but not too lovely:

Especially after I ripped it within one day of owning it. (I got a little excited showing it to someone and whipped off the cover with a flourish . . . and by whipped, I mean RIPPED.):No matter. A few hours and a little IKEA fabric later I came up with this:MUCH better.

Since the cover was already ripped, I went ahead and cut it apart to make myself some pattern pieces and voila! Don't forget that decorative stitch on the bottom. ;) Those little details make the difference.

Monday, August 4, 2008

Now that I am going *sew crazy*, I find myself with an excuse to cover everything I see in fabric. I just want to try things I haven't tried before and see if I can't make something that looks cool in the process. Here is my latest sewing escapade:

Below is a picture of my front door from the inside. It's got these lovely little side windows which I had no thought of covering with curtains pre-Connie days (yes . . . my sewing machine now has a name). If I were to turn around from where I was standing and taken a picture, you would see that my "office" is right there when you walk through the front door. I feel much better about that arrangement since the entry of the computer cabinet which tucks all the computer office-y stuff away, but (and maybe this is just me being weird and paranoid) it has bothered me for some time that those little side windows are there. Don't get me wrong, I love the way they look, but I work late at night into the wee hours . . . and perhaps I have seen too many horror movies, but I don't like that my back is to these windows. The later it gets the more I get it in my mind that someone is peeping in at me through them. (Note: I have never caught anyone peeping at me and have no reason to believe that anyone actually has . . . like I said, just weird paranoia.)So we have this deep red/burgundy accent wall to the right of the door which was just begging to be pulled into the windows. I took a little trip to Fields, sat down for a chat with Connie, and out they came:I took a picture of them during the daylight hours so you could see the way the light filters through them in a "yay, you did it!" kind of way. They make me happy every time I walk down the stairs . . . more than anything because the more I sew, the more inspired I am to sew some more.They're not "perfect" or whatever, but it doesn't bother me. I am not too perfectionistic about these things. In a totally superfluous "I did it because I can" kind of move, I decorative stitched it the whole way around intead of just giving a boring straight seam. I am realizing about myself that I will use any excuse in the world to use the decorative stitch function on my machine. Matching the thread to the fabric and then stitching decoratively makes no sense at all, because unless someone really looked up close they would miss it . . . but I know it's there. :)This was also my first time sewing in velcro. I know, a zipper and now velcro? I've got to come up with an excuse now to make a buttonhole and I will have acquired more sewing skills in 2 weeks than in the whole rest of my sewing career. :P